When thinking about grief and church ministries, puppets aren’t usually the next thing that comes to mind. But in LSU Theatre’s newest show, 17-year-old Jason uses his church’s puppet ministry to help cope with the loss of his father.
“Hand to God,” written by Robert Askins, is a show like no other. Following Jason, his mother and others in their religious community, this play is a strangely dark and comedic exploration of religion, grief and community.
Morgane Campbell, a sophomore psychology major, plays Jessica in the show. She explained that in the show, Jason uses puppets to cope with the craziness around himPuppet from “Hand to God”
“[It’s] an escape from all of the things that he’s going through,” Campbell said.
The character of Jessica is a reluctant participant in the puppet ministry in a highly religious town. Campbell mentioned that she grew up in a Christain family and went to Catholic school, so it was easy to pull from her experience when creating the character.
“The show is definitely a little outrageous, a little out there, but I think the people who come to see it will definitely feel a little shock,” said Campbell.
Puppets are a truly rare occurrence in theatrical performances nowadays, and it has been a first for most of the cast and crew. This show has been a learning process for Campbell — at the beginning, it was a challenge to catch on, but now she’s having fun with it.
Being a lab show, this production is all student led and run, which has allowed the actors and designers a lot of room to try different things. This is Campbell’s first lab show, and she has enjoyed being so collaborative with the team.
“I love when things are student-led,” said Campbell. “Being able to collaborate and make choices as a team rather than being told what to do like some directors.”
The cast and crew of “Hand to God” have become slightly infamous for their fun and odd posts all over Instagram, filled with posts using Charli XCX’s song “House” to polls on which team member has a bigger bald spot. Campbell uses the show’s social media to develop her character, thinking about what she would post and portray herself as.
Hunter Nastasi is a senior arts administration major, and he plays the lead character of Jason. When describing his character, Nastasi called him a shy kid who is out of his element. Nastasi is incredibly excited for the show, noting that it interrogates religion by putting it on one side or the other.
“It’s also a very funny play, so there’s that,” Natasi said. “It really does make you ask questions about Jason and Tyrone [the puppet]. There’s a lot of pulling of the strings from each side. It makes you wonder, like, who’s actually in control. ‘Is this Jason saying this, or is this actually Tyrone saying this?’”
The cast and director were hush-hush about quite a few plot points, wanting to keep an element of surprise for the audience. But the really intriguing part about the play is the fact that Jason’s puppet Tyrone gets turned into something different. With the wild plot the show has, it takes a lot of work to bring people together and shape the story.
Ethan Hood is a senior technical theatre and film and television major at LSU, and he is the director of “Hand to God.” This is not his first time directing, but like most of the team, it is his first time working with puppets. For him, the puppet part of the show came together quite quickly. Hood mentioned that Brandy Ernst, the play’s puppet designer, loves the Muppets and had them ready to go by the second week of rehearsals.
This show has a lot of moving parts, plus and some dark moments, so it was important for Hood to get outside help with intimacy coordination, fight choreography and more. For him, learning to allow others to help shape the show was something new he had to do.
“I’m hoping the audience takes away from the show that all emotions are valid,” Hood said. “The show has a lot of humanness in it; there’s a lot of human emotions. Even though there are puppets, it is a very human and very grounded show.”
Hood is most excited for the audience to see Act 2, which is the culmination of everything that is set up at the beginning of the play.
“It’s an enjoyable hecticness,” said Hood. “I want this to reflect life, and even though life can get hectic, you gotta slow down and enjoy it sometimes. Just enjoy the fun moments as much as you have to work through the harder moments.”
LSU Theatre’s fourth lab show of the year, “Hand to God,” opens Feb. 25 and runs until Mar. 1. More information and access to tickets are available on the Purple Pass website.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source lsureveille.com ’
